Mark it in your calendar: 2017 was the year when gene therapy (broadly defined) became something more than hypothetical. Hard to talk about 2017 as a great year, but that’s the storyline in genetics. Here’s the countdown:

Ohio Bans Abortions for a Fetus Affected with Down Syndrome

In December 2017, Ohio became the 3rd state to criminalize abortion to avoid the birth of a child with a genetic condition. The first law was passed in North Dakota in 2013 and remains on the books, and a similar measure in Indiana that focuses specifically on Down syndrome was enjoined by court order after an ACLU challenge.

Ohio’s law makes it a felony to perform an abortion if the patient’s motivation is to avoid the birth of a child with Down syndrome. These laws appear unlikely to be enforced: unconstitutional under Roe v Wade, they should not survive a court challenge, and if they did, they would be incredibly difficult to enforce. Still, there are several reasons why it is worth paying attention to what must now officially be called a trend.

First, these laws didn’t pop up organically, and they indicate that therapeutic abortion is on the radar of anti-abortion groups. Expect more of the same, and battles on related fronts, including insurance coverage for prenatal testing.

Second, even if the law is never enforced, it could affect practice. A woman’s motivation is hard to prove, but the motivation of a genetic counselor or a physician discussing termination after a diagnosis of Down syndrome is crystal clear, and could put them at risk. Even a distant and unlikely threat of a felony prosecution is a great disincentive to any clinician. Discouraging counseling may pr may not prevent abortion but it absolutely deprives couples of the good, unbiased information that Down syndrome advocates have been working on for years. And as usual, it increases disparities in care for individuals with fewer resources or less education.

Third, polling suggests that a slim majority of the country believes abortion should be available for pregnant women when the fetus faces cognitive impairment, but it’s emotionally tricky territory and norms may shift to make therapeutic abortion more stigmatized. There’s a reason why the second and third iterations of the law specified Down syndrome: this is a public relations campaign and Down syndrome kids present a sweet and photogenic face. “Every Ohioan deserves a right to life, no matter how many chromosomes they have,” said the head of the Ohio Right to Life, neatly eliminating the difference between a fetus and a child.

Fourth, expect a whole lot more of this if we lose Roe v Wade.

STAT names the Swiss Army Knife the top CRISPR metaphor

Bacteria have been using CRISPR for aeons, but humans have only had it in their gene editing toolkit for five years. In that short span, technical advancements have occurred so quickly that 2012 CRISPR is starting to feel a bit old school. Some of these innovations improve the original CRISPR search-and-delete functionality – reducing off target effects, for example, or improving the odds of replacing deleted DNA segments with a scripted sequence delivered via a template. Other advancements add new types of functionality. In 2017, researchers introduced a modified CRISPR system uses the same search function but doesn’t cut; instead, it alters gene expression by changing the elaborate system of packaging that turns gene on or off. In another iteration of CRISPR search-and-don’t-cut functionality, scientists from Harvard and the Broad Institute have pioneered a technique called base editing, which locates a specific spot in the DNA sequence and replaces a single base through a series of chemical reactions without the riskier business of inducing a double-stranded break. In October, researchers from China announced that they had tested base editing in human embryos, and were able to correct a mutation that causes the blood disease beta thalassemia 23% of the time.

The proliferation of CRISPR varietals led writers at STAT to give top honors to “the Swiss army knife” in a ranking of CRISPR metaphors (runner up: “organic photoshop”).

Harvard’s George Church opens up the George Church Institute in China

Synthetic DNA made significant steps forward this year, starting with an announcement in January that researchers at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla have produced a modified a strain of E coli whose DNA has six rather than the usual four base pairs. The following October, in a story that my be the epitome of 2017, Harvard professor George Church traveled to China to announce the opening of the eponymous George Church Institute of Regenesis. This collaboration with Chinese giant BGI has plans to develop clinical applications of synthetic biology. The investment of substantial resources in artificial life forms and bio-manufacturing is one indication of where we are headed; sadly, the decision by one of America’s great science talents to launch an ambitious project halfway across the world may also prove to be a sign of things to come.

Popular Culture Discovers CRISPR

This was the year I read my first sci-fi novel about a world where children (and pets) are routinely gene-edited. Although it was a dystopian vision, I have to admit I was intrigued by the tiger-ized house cat…

CRISPR has definitely captured the imagination of a good part of the universe, and my sense is that the jury is out on whether our new powers of gene editing are going to be viewed as cool or creepy. Meanwhile, here’s some unexpected places where CRISPR popped up in 2017.

On Jeopardy!

In Ashton Kutcher’s twitter feed:

Graffitied on the mean streets of San Francisco:

This is a sleeper pick at number 7, but I believe it’s important to understand that people are paying attention, because (like the rest of us) they don’t yet know what to think. The early uses of CRISPR will have a great impact on public opinion, and very likely on support for research, development and commercialization of gene editing down the road. It’s something to think about.

The FDA Changes Direction on DTC Genetic Testing

The FDA executed a remarkable about-face on direct-to-consumer genetic testing in 2017, beginning in April when the agency approved a new iteration of their SNP scan for liability to disease, 3 ½ years after they shut down sales of the alpha version, claiming it posed a risk to the health of those who bought it. In addition to signing off on testing for 10 complex conditions where the genetic contribution is important but not definitive, the FDA announcement established some ground rules that could be applied to other tests and other companies. First, the decision identified 23andMe as what they called a ‘trusted provider’ and indicated that having been so designated, they would not have to jump through regulatory hoops for every new test, and would be exempt from premarket review. Second, the agency created a category called “genetic health risk (GHR)” tests, as distinct from genetic tests that were diagnostic, which were explicitly excluded from exemption.

Presumably, the agency’s goal was twofold: to remove impediments to the growth of DTC, while carving out some rules for what belonged in that realm, as distinct from what belonged in a clinical setting. In November, the FDA made this explicit, announcing its intention to establish a new regulatory structure for GHR tests which would formalize the ‘trusted provider’ approach through a one-day FDA review, allowing them to introduce non-diagnostic tests and carrier screens without further premarket scrutiny.

This change in governance is likely a response to what is happening in Washington, where anti-regulatory sentiment is rife, and may also be due to changes in the marketplace, with major players like Illumina and Google making sizeable bets on DTC genetic testing ventures. There is little question that the FDA moves have had a big impact, and the fledgling DTC industry appears to have spread its wings and taken off. Strong Christmas sales for both Ancestry.com and 23andMe indicate that consumers are willing to give genetic testing a try; sustained success may be contingent on how that experience goes for the recipients.

First RNAi Drugs Show Promise in Human Trials

Many of the early targets of gene therapy are diseases caused by a single missing or defective protein, and the goal in these cases is to introduce a gene that will produce what the body is lacking. Despite the fact that we have not been very successful to date, it is a simple model; often replacing a small fraction of normal production is enough to treat or effectively cure the disease. In some diseases, however, the problem is not the absence of a normal protein but the presence of an abnormal one which disrupts function or damages healthy tissue. In these cases, you can’t simply (‘simply’) replace what you don’t have but must find a way to silence the gene product that is causing all the trouble.

One way to do this is to intercept the RNA messages before they are made into protein via RNA interference – designer RNA’s that find and bind to specific transcripts to prevent translation. Like many other forms of what might broadly be called gene therapy (I’m not into fights about semantics so don’t @ me), RNAi has not fulfilled it’s conceptual promise to date, but that seems to be on the verge of changing. In October Ionis Pharmaceuticals launched the first human trials of a RNAi drug for Huntington’s disease, and in November a Cambridge-based company called Alnylam announced that its RNAi drug for hereditary ATTR amyloidosis was showing success in phase 3 trials and might be up for FDA review in 2018.

In Vivo Gene Editing Mitigates Deafness (in Mice)

In another late entry into the Top Stories of 2017, researchers from the lab of David Liu published a December article in nature describing the use of in vivo gene editing to facilitate hearing in mice bred to exhibit a form of genetic deafness found in humans. Mice injected with CRISPR-Cas9 complexes showed more hair cells and improved response to auditory testing. While it is always good practice to remind ourselves that not everything that works in rodents works in people but… in vivo gene editing is a remarkable technical achievement with incredible potential. Brought to you, by the way, by a co-founder of Editas Medicine, so this maybe this blog post can double as a stock tip. 2017, ladies and gentlemen.

A Gene Therapy Ready for Prime Time at Last!

We’ve been talking about gene therapy for so long it seems like old hat, except that this particular old hat has never been thrown into the ring… until now. On December 19th, the FDA approved Luxturna, a gene therapy for blindness. First of its kind, Luxturna introduces a gene into retinal cells by a viral vector and, in cells where uptake of the wildtype variant increases the production of normal protein.

Eyeballs are a uniquely accessible body part, making them low-hanging fruit for gene therapy, but low-hanging fruit is the place to start, and the take-home point here is that the new and improved gene editing technology and gene delivery systems are for real, as is (finally) gene therapy. Coming soon: gene therapies for blood-based diseases such as hemophilia and sickle cell. Still to be determined: how much all of this will cost.

Immunotherapy Delivers a One-two Punch

The cancer field has been buzzing about Car-T therapy for years, hopeful that this new class of therapies designed to harness the body’s own immune system would not only expand the range of cancers we could fight, but do so in a targeted fashion that would reduce the toxicity associated with current chemotherapies. Immunotherapy has been through several rounds of hype-and-hate before getting out of the clinical trial phase, as stories about patients rescued from the deathbed have sent up smiley face trial balloons and deaths from unanticipated side effects have popped them.

After all the anticipation, approval of the first two Car-T drugs came only weeks apart, with Kymriah, a drug for pediatric leukemia, approved in August and Yescarta, for some forms of B-call lymphoma, following close behind. All the usual caveats apply – real-world safety and efficacy still to be worked out over time, and price price price price price plus access, but without setting that aside, I want to take a moment to congratulate everyone who worked to create and validate this new and important class of cancer therapies.

The Boy who Got New Skin Is Everything You Ever Hoped For in a Stem Cell Success Story

I was six paragraphs into Ed Yong’s story about a boy with epidermolysis bullosa when I realized it was going to be my top story in genetics for 2017. How many things are there to love about this story? First of all, it’s about a cure for EB, a disease that disrupts the normal structure of the skin, making it fragile, so that it is prone to rupture and blister. In bad cases, people are plagued with open sores that will not heal. It’s a biblical plague of a disease, and this kid was in terrible shape – shape – seven years old, and headed to hospice care.

And they fixed him. This is also a stem cell success story, joining the list of finally-finally-at last therapeutic success stories in 2017. Doctors removed a small patch of precious intact skin from seven-year-old Hassan and sent it to researchers in Italy, who isolated and corrected skin stem cells, and then used them to grown sheets of skin in which to sheath the dying child. They replaced an astounding 80% of his old skin and – here’s the part from paragraph six – less than a year later he is back in school, playing sports and living the life of a normal child.

I promised myself never to talk about these high tech miracles without discussing cost and access, so here I raise relevant questions: what’s this going to cost, and who will be able to get it? Honestly, I have no idea. And for the record, this technique won’t work for all variants of the disease. But there is a lot to celebrate.

It seems strange to talk about 2017 as a series of victories for humanity, but the year in genetics was full of hope and promise, and nowhere was that contrast more on display than here, in the a story of a global community coming together to save a life. A Syrian child, treated by German doctors together with Italian researchers who were mentored by an American pioneer… It was the epitome of 2017 in genetics, though sadly not the epitome of 2017 in any other sphere.

Shut my mouth. That is one of the hardest things for me to do during a genetic counseling session, though paradoxically it is among the simplest. Despite decades of experience as a genetic counselor, I still have a tendency to dominate my interactions with patients. Maybe all of us are guilty of this to varying degrees. To some extent, it is a natural by-product of a clinical service with a significant educational component. Dialogue easily morphs into monologue.

But genetic counseling does not end at education. Instead the counseling component simultaneously flows from and shapes the educational aspects. I sometimes need a virtual dopeslap upside my head from Jon Weil’s or Seymour Kessler’s spiritual avatar to get things back on track.

How We Talk, a book about conversational analysis by the linguist N.J. Enfield, has helped heighten my awareness of my tendency to dominate counseling sessions. And it is a lot less psychologically painful than Jon’s or Seymour’s dopeslaps.

A typical conversation flows with a rhythm guided by timing cues. Speaker A says something and then Speaker B seamlessly follows with a response to what Speaker A just said, and so the conversational turn-taking flows through to the conclusion of the conversation.In normal everyday conversation the average length of the transition between when Speaker A stops speaking and Speaker B responds is ~200 milliseconds. Literallly in the blink of an eye Speaker B recognizes that it is the appropriate time to speak and has a response ready. The brevity of the silence interval is mute testimony to the stunning complexity of the human brain. Conversation is like a John Cage musical composition based on a pattern of silences. Silence is to conversation as zero is to numbers.

Of course, there are within- and between- individual variations in any conversation. There are also differences between languages, but the differences are slight. For example, in the Mayan language Tzeltal, the average transition time is 67 milliseconds, in Italian it is 310 milliseconds, in Lao it is 420 milliseconds, and in Danish it is 470 milliseconds. English is just above average at 236 milliseconds. No doubt a Dane would drive a Tzeltal speaker crazy with the extended transition time, but the difference between the languages is under half a second, within the range of an eye blink.

The dialogue from the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s move along at dizzying speed because we perceive the transition times as almost non-existent. The great screenwriters intuitively understood this and Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, et al., effortlessly deliver witty repartee that leaves your brain gasping for breath.

When the transition time exceeds a half second, and especially as it approaches one second, Speaker A perceives the response as taking too long and tends to jump back into the conversation, “out of turn.” This One Second Rule is called a standard maximum silence. It is often more than a matter of Speaker B needing more time to formulate a response to a complex statement or question. The longer than expected delay can communicate that Speaker B thinks the response is “non-preferred,” that is, something that Speaker B feels may not be the reply that Speaker A wants to hear. And when Speaker A jumps in out of turn, Speaker A will re-phrase in a way that makes it easier for Speaker B to give a non-preferred response. Subtle non-verbal emotional interplay takes place in the space of a silent second. The silence of the iambs. The following fictional counseling scenario demonstrates this:

Scenario A

Counselor: So, do you think you want to undergo this genetic test?

(1 second pause)

Counselor: You don’t have to make up your mind right now.

(800 millisecond pause)

Client: Well, the test could be helpful. I am not sure about my insurance coverage, though.

Here, the 1 second pause suggests that the patient may not want the test, and the “long” pause pushes the counselor to jump in and say something that makes it easier for the patient to decline testing. The patient replies in a way that that the patient feels the counselor prefers to hear – the test is important – but bringing up insurance coverage gives the patient a “legitimate” reason to decline testing. Even though the counselor may feel that she or he was non-directive, the patient may have picked up on a message that perhaps the counselor thinks the patient should undergo testing, even if the counselor is not saying it in so many words.

Generally, Yes/No responses that occur within the first half second of a transition are perceived as more definitive whereas responses that are closer to one second or longer are usually interpreted as ambiguous. The following fictional exchanges between a counselor and a client illustrate this:

Scenario B

Counselor: So, do you think you want to undergo this genetic test?

(200 millisecond pause)

Client: Yes.

Scenario C

Counselor: So, do you think you want to undergo this genetic test?

(1 second pause)

Client: Um (3oo millisecond pause) it might be a good idea.

In Scenario B, the short transition time of the client’s response suggests a strong desire to have testing. However, in Scenario C, it takes the client 1.3 seconds to arrive at a form of Yes, the hesitancy in the response possibly reflecting a hesitancy to undergo testing. The interjection “Um” before saying “Yes” reinforces the perception of ambiguity. This 1+ second difference in transition time is a clue to skilled counselors to more deeply investigate the patients’ desires and reasoning, even though the counselors and the clients may not be consciously aware that clients are communicating clues to their ambiguity.

Of course, in the context of a counseling session, a delayed response could be due to the cognitive processing required to comprehend technical medical information or it could be due to psychological processing of an emotionally laden discussion. Which, to some extent, is the point here. A genetic counseling session is not usually an ordinary conversation (though a skilled counselor can make it appear that way), so the turn-taking of the speakers can be expected to have a different rhythm and follow different timing cues. But because we are so subconsciously attuned to the rhythm of normal conversation, the tendency for genetic counselors to sometimes dominate a session may stem in part from relying on the wrong timing cues and to speak out of turn before patients are ready to articulate their thoughts.

An interesting research project would be to record counseling sessions with the purpose of timing transitions between counselor and client. This could then be correlated with outcomes such as patient satisfaction and uptake of recommendations to see if they were influenced by conversational transitions. Transition times could also be used to guide the development of better counseling skills by helping the counselor to understand ways that transition times were used appropriately or inappropriately during the course of a counseling session.

To be sure, transition times are not the only non-verbal influence on the rhythm of a conversation. Posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye gaze can influence the flow of conversations and serve to articulate the psyche. Reading the body of clients is as important a skill as being attuned to their verbal language. People are generally less aware of their body language and thus it can more “honestly” and directly reveal underlying psychological and emotional processes than verbal language.

It is extraordinarily difficult to be keyed into what Enfield calls “the inner workings of conversation,” especially in the moment of the conversation. It involves unlearning, or more precisely becoming aware of and being able to manipulate, a language protocol that has been subconsciously engrained into us since we burst out of our amniotic sacs. Becoming a good counselor is not simple nor is the path always straight. The graph of professional growth follows a jagged and at times recursive line. There is no breakthrough moment when you permanently become the genetic counseling equivalent of a Jedi Master, able to manipulate the Counseling Force to your will and you are infused with Yoda-like wisdom. Easy it is not.

“It seems to me that all the gentlemen agree, some more explicitly than others, that to abort is a good thing and should be encouraged.”
– from a discussion reported in Early Diagnosis of Human Genetic Defects: Scientific and Ethical Considerations, Maureen Harris (ed). National Institutes of Health, 1970.

I sometimes feel like a lone voice howling in the wind-swept darkness when I argue that any opinion, policy, or analysis of prenatal testing must be rooted in historical context. Often these endeavors are informed by technical aspects of a test, such as sensitivity, specificity, cost, and positive predictive value, sometimes accompanied by vague mumblings about “ethical considerations” and “women’s choices.” But these discussions are inadequate unless they also take into account the historical, social, cultural, and economic factors behind the development, expansion, acceptance, and critiques of genetic testing technologies.

To develop a full understanding of prenatal testing, we need to ask difficult questions with thorny, complicated and uncomfortable answers. What was the impetus for the introduction of prenatal diagnosis in the 1960s and 1970s? Why were researchers studying birth defects, cell culturing techniques, and karyotypes at that particular time? How have changing attitudes toward disability, abortion, and reproductive rights shaped, and been shaped by, prenatal diagnosis? What path does a test follow from being offered to a very small and select percentage of the pregnant population to becoming a routine part of every pregnancy? Why are there regional and historical differences in the acceptance, application, and history of prenatal testing? Why is it nearly impossible to have a discussion about prenatal screening that is not also a discussion about abortion?

Well, I don’t feel so lonely anymore after having read Ilana Löwy’s new book, Imperfect Pregnancies: A History of Birth Defects & Prenatal Diagnosis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). The title pretty much tells you what the book is about, but it is more than just a recitation of discoveries and events. The author, an emerita research fellow at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, argues that prenatal testing can best be understood in the context of Michel Foucault’s concept of a dispositif – loosely speaking, the institutions, social factors, laws, regulations, scientific and professional practices that create, maintain, and reinforce a body of knowledge and give it power (no doubt some Foucault scholar will take issue with my description, but you get the general idea). But Löwy’s book is not a high falutin’ study of abstract theories of knowledge. It is concretely embedded in a richly detailed analysis – some of it original and some of it summarizing the work of others – of how we have arrived at the point where prenatal testing, particularly ultrasonography and now NIPT, has become integrated into the routine care of nearly all pregnant women in many Westernized countries.

Let me acknowledge some intellectual conflicts of interest up front: the author cites some postings to The DNA Exchange by me and others, references some of my publications, and thanks me – among many others – in her introductory section. No doubt these small ego strokes influenced my perceptions of the book in ways that I can’t fully recognize.

Imperfect Pregnancies opens with the somewhat artibitrary but reasonable starting point in the late 19th century and the work of obstetricians John Ballantyne and Adolphe Pinard, in Scotland and France respectively, on the nature and causes of birth defects and the medical supervision of pregnancy that they felt was necessary to ensure the delivery of a healthy baby. From there she ties in the history of cytogenetics and karyotyping, congenital malformations and dysmorphology, the emergence of amniocentesis and prenatal ultrasonography in the 1960s and 1970s, the introduction of serum and sonographic screening for Down syndrome in the 1980s and 1990s, and right up to the latest testing technologies of the early 21st century such as comparative genomic arrays and noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT).

This is not a scolding work that draws a straight historical line from eugenics to prenatal diagnosis. While eugenic criticisms are certainly valid concerns about the potential ramifications of prenatal testing and that is true that the development of prenatal diagnosis was a clear reflection of negative attitudes toward disability, the Eugenics Movement per se was not a driving historical engine behind prenatal testing. Still, Löwy makes it clear that prenatal diagnosis was established in the context of a public health model to permit and passively encourage abortion (as the introductory quote at the start of my posting suggests) of aneuploid or otherwise “defective” fetuses under the justification of allowing parents to have as healthy a baby as possible, and that was maintained by the social, ethical, medical, legal, and economic factors that made this possible (i.e., the dispositif). Pregnant women were enticed by tests that offered reassurance but some were left with the messy situation of what to do when the testing did not come back with normal results and had to make extraordinarily difficult decisions about how to proceed in largely uncharted territory, a situation genetic counselors know all too well. In the words of one researcher, women were forced “to become skilled managers of fetal risk.”

The author brings an international perspective to her narrative, including experiences with prenatal testing in the US, the UK, France, Israel, Brazil, and Scandinavia, among others. Prenatal testing is managed differently in each country according to unique local circumstances and this has an impact on uptake of testing and abortion. For example, in the Netherlands, where a detailed discussion of screening is routinely incorporated into pregnancies largely by midwives in a non-medical setting, the uptake of testing is much lower than in countries where there is less discussion and is physician driven. In Brazil, where abortion for fetal indications is limited to anencephaly, the uptake of NIPT is much greater among upper socio-economic status who have access to safe (if technically illegal) abortion compared to poorer women who do not have such ready access. Laboratory marketing has taken advantage of the social status associated with having the latest medical tests among Brazilian women, especially during pregnancy, to further integrate NIPT into routine care. In places around the world where women are likely to leave the work force and devote themselves full-time to child rearing, the uptake of prenatal testing and abortion is lower than in areas where women continue to work after childbirth.

The limitations of the early technologies are somewhat shocking from the biased perspective of today. When John Edwards analyzed the unbanded karyotype of the first patient with his eponymous syndrome, he thought the underlying cytogenetic abnormality was trisomy 17 rather than trisomy 18 until Klaus Patau (who first described trisomy 13) set him straight. In Riis and Fuchs first reports of prenatal diagnosis of fetal sex among hemophilia carriers in Denmark in 1960, one woman proved to have a female fetus that she miscarried after amniocentesis, went on to have another female fetus that also miscarried after amniocentesis, a third pregnancy that was a male and was aborted, and finally had a fourth pregnancy in which the patient successfully carried the pregnancy to term after a female fetus was correctly identified by amniocentesis (I can envision many prenatal genetic counselors simultaneously nodding and shaking their heads right now). Of the first 20 attempts at identification of fetal sex among hemophilia carriers in Riis and Fuchs series, 17 were successful, two resulted in failure to establish fetal sex, and one female fetus was mistakenly identified as male and the pregnancy was terminated (I can hear many prenatal genetic counselors now saying “Ouch!”).

There are a few areas I think the author leaves largely under-explored. Although she gives thoughtful discussion to genetic counselors, I think she understates their importance in ushering in, shaping, and managing each new prenatal testing technology. We have been the boots on the ground as each test was introduced into clinical practice, more or less left alone with patients to negotiate the complicated medical, ethical, and psychological ramifications of “simple blood tests” and “routine sonograms” gone awry.

In the early sections of the book Löwy details the role that obstetricians played in the historical pathways leading up to prenatal testing. However, there was little mention of the obstetricians who worked closely with clinical geneticists and sometimes became board certified in genetics themselves in the 1970s and 1980s – Mickey Golbus, Larry Karp, Mike Mennuti, and Joe Leigh Simpson, to name a few.

I would also like to have seen fuller discussion of the Professional Liability Alert issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in May of 1985, which stated: It is now imperative that you investigate the availability of these tests in your area and familiarize yourself with the procedure, location, and mechanism of the follow-up tests to screen for neural tube defects. Although to the best of my knowledge no one has ever studied the impact of this Alert on the uptake of maternal serum screening in the US, I know that the immediate impact in my neck of the woods was profound and long-lasting. Most of the obstetrical care providers in the Seattle area suddenly started strongly recommending AFP screening to their patients and it set the tone for the ready acceptance of most other prenatal screening tests that followed over the next 30 years. Although the book briefly mentions obstetricians’ concerns about legal liability, she does not go further down this street and I believe incorrectly attributes it to the AMA’s “concerns.”

But these latter points do not detract from the overall achievements and arguments of Imperfect Pregnancies. If you are a supporter or a critic of prenatal testing, or, like many people, decidedly ambiguous, there is much that you will learn and much that will make you pause and re-examine your own views and knowledge base.

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Tony Holzman, now retired from Johns Hopkins and who contributed so much valuable research on the social, ethical, and psychological aspects of genetics, is now a novelist. He has published several novels including Blame, about murder and intrigue in genetics research at the NIH. Tony is now working on publishing his newest novel, The Bethune Murals. The novel is based on the true life story of a physician who was diagnosed with TB and was confined to the Trudeau Sanitarium in the 1920s and who produced a remarkable set of murals on paper used to wrap laundry at the institution. Tony is looking to self published his book through Amazon but needs to get enough votes in an Amazon competition. If you have an Amazon account, you can vote for Tony here.

As a long time admirer, reader and guest blogger, I am thrilled to have been invited to write as a regular contributor for the DNA Exchange. Some recent statements about prenatal testing in the news brought to mind my very first guest post on the DNA Exchange,Information Detoxification, published 5 years ago. So I am going to start this new chapter by going back where I began as a guest blogger, on the topic of the risks of routinizing prenatal genetic testing.

Last week, a genetic testing lab released a statement about their intention to use recent investments “with an eye toward making expanded carrier screening as routine as taking folic acid, noninvasive prenatal screening as routine as an ultrasound, and hereditary cancer screening as well-known as a pap smear.” While this vision is quite positive for the lab’s investors, it is concerning for the future of reproductive autonomy. The underlying goal that all pregnant women should have prenatal testing is not unique to this lab. In fact, there is increasing pressure towardsexpanding the use of thesetests by many labs, likely representing the intense competition in the genetic testing business right now, driving the need to increase test uptake to the largest possible market.

I have mixed feelings about population screening for hereditary cancer, but the implications are completely different when considering prenatal carrier and cfDNA screening. Although prenatal testing is important to many, it is crucial that women and their partners be given the opportunity to make autonomous and informed decisions about whether or not to take these tests. The routinization of prenatal testing is problematic for several reasons: from a social and public policy standpoint, in regards to healthcare economics, and also for individual patient care.

Social and Public Policy

Advocating for reproductive autonomy and informed decisions around prenatal genetic tests was one of the first guiding principles of the genetic counseling profession. This is in part due to the fact that the start of the master’s degree trained genetic counselor coincided with social movements inwomen’s reproductive rights and also the emergence of the field ofbioethics.

The prioritization of patient autonomy in reproductive genetics also arose from the rejection of eugenic ideology and practices that were common in the early part of the 20th century which sought to encourage reproductive of the fittest and to discourage (sometimes forcibly) reproduction among those deemed as defective or unfit.

This history supports concerns that the routinization of prenatal testing may effectively stigmatize those who have an increased chance to have a child with a genetic condition, thereby limiting reproductive freedom. This is especially troubling in the context of the current political and social climate with so many expressing racist, xenophobic, and ableist views, as well as increasing threats tohealth care security and social services.

Without peeling back all of the layers on this topic, there is one clear explanation for why routinization of prenatal testing does not make good financial sense. Given that the purpose of prenatal genetic testing is to inform personal reproductive decisions, in order for these tests to be of value, they must first be desired by the fully informed patient. No matter the price of a prenatal genetic test, it is a needless healthcare cost if the patient does not want it.

Patient Care

Should all patients be routinely counseled about their options for prenatal genetic testing? Absolutely. Practice guidelines for prenatalgenetic testing support offering these tests to all women in the context of counseling that supports informed and value-consistent decisions. But this conflicts with the model that the testing labs seem to be promoting, which is to test everyone first and provide the information in follow-up, after testing has already been done. This undermines patient autonomy andcan cause harm.

When an individual would use results to facilitate reproductive decisions, testing can be empowering. What is often overlooked in our well-intentioned goals to provide patients with knowledge however, is the potential harm and disempowerment that may result when testing information is not desired. Patients deserve the opportunity to make a choice about whether the information these tests provide is something they want to know or not. It is imperative of genetic counselors to resist any suggestion that reproductive genetic testing should be routine. I hope that all of us, whether working in the clinic or the lab, will continue to advocate for reproductive autonomy for our patients and hold firm in the goal that all patients should have the opportunity to make informed choices regarding prenatal genetic tests prior to testing. How we move forward with this challenge in both practice and policy is a defining question for our profession.

If you are a genetic counselor supporting the Graham-Cassidy proposal to replace Obamacare, you are a rare bird. Most genetic counselors – most medical professionals – most Americans for that matter – are opposed to this bill, because it compromises our ability to provide basic, essential medical care for people in need. It is not in dispute that millions of American will lose health insurance under this bill. Those with health insurance will generally pay more for less. Many of the changes remove existing protections on which our patients are particularly reliant. Here are some examples:

PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS

The bill will allow states to eliminate regulations on pre-existing conditions, so that people will risk losing coverage if they change or lose their jobs. This is a disaster for individuals with chronic health problems including genetic conditions, and potentially a disaster for individuals who carry susceptibility genes. Although you might make the case that GINA should protect those individuals in theory, in practice it becomes hard to draw the line for what constitutes an existing disease in an at-risk individual. For instance, if a Lynch Syndrome carrier requires special screening and has polyps removed, are they preventing disease or symptomatic? Will a subsequent carrier argue that they already showed signs of Lynch and therefore are not covered for further screening or colon cancer? The fact is that Obamacare arrived before these questions got answered, and there is a very real risk that GINA protections will be eroded when the actual lines between pre-existing and manifest disease are drawn.

PRENATAL CARE

The new law allows policies to limit or even eliminate coverage for prenatal care. This logic of this abomination – the disgusting and perverse logic to be voted on by a collection of doddering old men who apparently were not of women born – is that pregnancy is not a disease but a choice, and affects only subset of women, so that others should not be asked to bear the costs. This decision abrogates the most fundamental obligation of civil society, which is to raise the next generation. You have one job, civilization. One job.

Every politician who argues that it is not fair to ask everyone to pay for insurance that covers prenatal care should be asked if they believe it is fair to ask women to pay for policies that cover prostate cancer care. Or who it is they believe will care for them in the nursing home, or fight for them in their wars, or protect their streets or teach their grandchildren or write their history books if not the next generation of Americans.

But you see here I am getting worked up, and the very righteousness of this anger masks another aspect of this change that has particular resonance for genetic counselors: limiting access to prenatal care limits access to prenatal testing, and limiting access to prenatal testing to those with more money will mean that those genetic diseases and conditions for which we can test will change the essential nature of genetic disease – no longer something that happens to everyone, it will become an affliction of vulnerable individuals. I wrote about this in a recent essay, calling it the Ghettoization of Genetic Disease, and this bill will help make that dystopian prediction a reality in the near term.

LIFETIME CAPS AND DISABILITY CARE

The Graham-Cassidy bill eliminates protections on lifetime caps, meaning that many individuals with chronic conditions, including genetic diseases, may end up without coverage. In addition, the cuts to Medicaid and other federally funded programs would radically reduce support for individuals with disabilities.

On the surface, flat out, this is heinous and cruel. Beyond that, for the genetics community, this undercuts the promise we make, by implication, to every woman or couple who decides to move forward with a pregnancy affected by or at risk for genetic disease. Supporting choice in reproductive decision-making is not a simple matter of holding someone’s hand through a difficult day. Supporting autonomous decision-making as a field means fighting for those individuals and families to be supported throughout the lifecycle. The choice to live in a world that offers no support or resources is no choice at all for most people.

LET’S TAKE A STAND

It is extremely unfortunate that healthcare, a subject of mutual concern and importance to all Americans, is now held hostage to the ignorant, pettiness of slogans on signs that angry partisans wave at campaign rallies. No professional organization wants to get embroiled in party politics. On the other hand, there are times when everything you believe in is threatened and you have to take a stand. I believe this is one of those times.

I’m hardly alone in this. The AMA released a statement yesterday opposing Graham-Cassidy. So have many other groups representing healthcare professionals and patients, a number of them listed here in Jimmy Kimmel’s eloquent denunciation of the bill (comedians must lead when politicians are clowns, I suppose, and what else can he do when our government is beyond satire?).

So please, NSGC, make us proud with a statement against this terrible bill. Let’s take a stand for our values and, more importantly, for our patients.

Iceland has given the world the Eddas, Sigur Rós,Björk, and some magnificent geology. A more ambiguous achievement, though, is suggested by a recent CBS News story that claimed that Down syndrome is disappearing from Iceland as a result of prenatal testing. The claim has been bouncing around the Internet for a few years. The earliest reference I could find was a November, 2015 letter sent to the Office of The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights authored by Downpride, an international advocacy group for people with Down syndrome. The letter is an “[a]ppeal to the United Nations to stop discriminatory use of prenatal genetic screening aimed at eradication of people with Down syndrome and other groups.” It was, in my view, an understandable and justifiable reaction to largely non-critical widespread adoption of Noninvasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) from a community that has good reason to be concerned. Needless to say, it generated a lot of heated reaction. Just Google “Iceland Down syndrome” and you will see what I mean.

Delving into the story was like getting lost in a hall of mirrors; many sites simply referenced each other. But the claim that Down syndrome is disappearing from Iceland and that 100% of pregnancies with Down syndrome in Iceland are terminated turns out to be not quite so straight-forward. While Iceland represents a microcosm of the larger concerns of people with disabilities, their families, and their supporters, it is not necessarily an accurate reflection of the macrocosm of the larger population dynamics of Down syndrome in other countries, particularly the United States.

The ultimate source of the data, according to the Downpride letter, was testimony presented to The Althing, the Icelandic parliament that is the world’s longest existing legislative body. I tried unsuccessfully to find that testimony. I then searched PubMed but found only limited help. So I decided to do my own back-of-the-napkin calculations. I obtained the birth distribution by maternal age in Iceland for 2016, and grouped the ages by quinquennia. The expected frequency of Down syndrome was based on data from 1976, prior to the advent of widespread prenatal diagnosis.

Age Group

# of Births

Exp. Frequency of Down S.

Exp. # of births with Down S.

15-19

72

1/1667

0

20-24

592

1/1587

0.37

25-29

1305

1/1087

1.2

30-34

1218

1/763

1.6

35-39

672

1/248

2.7

40-44

165

1/79

2

45+

10

1/24

0.4

Total

4034

1/488

8.27

Thus, in Iceland in 2016, there were 4034 births. In the absence of prenatal diagnosis and selective termination, 8 or 9 babies with Down syndrome would be born, for a frequency of ~1/450-500 births. I then made the following assumptions, acknowledging that each has some potential error:

According to Dr. Hulda Hjartardóttir, chief of obstetrics at Iceland’s National University Hospital, among Icelandic woman who have a positive screen, about 25% decline diagnostic testing and continue the pregnancy. Thus, roughly 1/3 of Icelandic pregnant women either do not undergo screening to begin with or decide to continue the pregnancy and not proceed to diagnostic testing if a screening test is positive. The impact of these percentages on Down syndrome frequency depends on the age distribution of those who declined screening or diagnostic testing, but for argument’s sake, I assumed an equal distribution across maternal ages.

100% of women whose pregnancies are diagnosed with Down syndrome will choose to terminate. I could not verify this claim, but I decided to go with the most extreme scenario. This has not been the experience in many countries, where termination rates have been high but not typically 100%.

The CBS News story mentions the Combined Screen, so I assumed this was the standard screening test in Iceland when the claims were made in The Althing. I therefore set the detection rate for Down syndrome to 90%, that is, of all women undergoing screening, about 10% of pregnancies with Down syndrome will be screen normal and would not proceed to termination (some studies suggest that the Combined Screen may have a sensitivity somewhat less than 90% but because about 21% of pregnancies in Iceland occur in women 35 and older, a higher sensitivity – and false positive – rate is expected).

Based on these assumptions and the above table, of the potential 8-9 babies born with Down syndrome, about 2-3 would actually be born because their mothers did not undergo either prenatal screening or diagnostic testing, and another baby with Down syndrome would be born because the Combined Screen would be expected to miss about one case. In other words, the total number of newborns with Down syndrome in Iceland would be expected to drop from 8-9 every year to about 3, maybe 4, per year. These numbers could increase or decrease with many factors, such as changes in fertility rates, maternal age distribution, the sensitivity of screening tests, social trends that influence the choice of abortion, and random fluctuations that occur with any demographic trend especially with the small number of births in Iceland (about that many babies were born last year in the hospital where I work in Seattle). If readers know of empirical data from Iceland to support or refute my estimates, please share it.

Of course, for advocates, every loss of a pregnancy with Down syndrome is serious, no matter how small the number. But these estimates put the concerns in some perspective. Among other things, it is fair to say that most, but not 100%, of pregnancies with Down syndrome are terminated in Iceland, and the birth prevalence of Down syndrome in Iceland is falling considerably but not likely, in my view, to disappear entirely.

I think a more realistic picture of the impact of prenatal screening on Down syndrome, in the US at least, is provided by Brian Skotko and his colleagues Frank Buckley, Jennifer Dever, and Gert de Graaf in a recent publication in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. Over the last few years, they have consistently provided some of the most reliable estimates of the demographics of Down syndrome and the effects of prenatal screening.

According to the de Graaf et al. paper, a detailed look at changes over time in the demographics of Down syndrome in 9 states, the number of people living with Down syndrome has steadily increased since 1950. The two major factors driving that growth have been longer survival due to better medical care along with the unrelenting trend of the last 35-40 years of delayed childbearing. This growth, however, has been partially offset by a loss of births with Down syndrome due to prenatal screening. The loss varies with geographic region, but overall, the prevalence of Down syndrome is roughly 70% of what it would be if prenatal screening were not available. Interestingly, the most growth in the Down syndrome population occurred among Hispanics and Native Americans. So, unlike the near elimination of Tay-Sachs disease in many Ashkenazi Jewish communities, the prevalence of Down syndrome is dropping, but not close to disappearing, at least in the US.

Other factors may affect the Down syndrome birth frequency, such as changes in maternal age distribution, availability of abortion, and access to health insurance. For example, in the highly unlikely event that every woman 35 and older refrained from pregnancy, the birth frequency of Down syndrome in the US and many Western European countries would be reduced by more than 50%. On the other hand, if abortion were to become illegal (not highly unlikely), then presumably the birth frequency of Down syndrome would increase. Limiting access to good medical care (unfortunately also not highly unlikely in the US) could lower the overall prevalence of Down syndrome because of reduced survival.

Current trends suggest that, for the immediate future, prenatal screening will continue to reduce the birth prevalence of Down syndrome. It is becoming increasingly easier for women to undergo prenatal screening and more difficult to just say no. This is due to aggressive marketing by commercial labs of “newer, better, bigger, cheaper” screening tests like NIPT; the dearth of time and resources devoted to unbiased education about Down syndrome and the pros and cons of screening tests; inequitable social distribution of medical resources and social support; and the rarity of long, difficult discussions between pregnant women/couples and their providers about whether they should even enter the prenatal screening cascade to begin with. It also does not help matters that the current US President lacks any moral decency and takes pleasure in mocking people with disabilities.

Although I am a strong supporter of women’s reproductive rights and well-informed, gut-wrenching decisions to terminate a pregnancy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide ethical justification for further expansion of prenatal screening, or expanded carrier screening for that matter. This is something that society needs to address but particularly genetic counselors because we are in the thick of it.

As I have previously argued, almost no research has been conducted that has tried to demonstrate whether prenatal screening can improve the medical, social, and emotional lives of people with disabilities and their families. Some women undergo prenatal screening because they think it will prepare them for raising a child with Down syndrome, but we really can’t tell them if screening does help or if it is worth their emotional and psychological investment. Carrying out such research is critical. If we can demonstrate broader benefit of prenatal screening, then we can open up a dialogue with the disability community rather than continue the shouting matches, and offer greater and more equitable justification for NIPT and other screening technologies.

Publication this week of a paper by reproductive biologist Shoukrat Mitalipov and others put the subject of editing little baby humans front and center – above the fold news in the NY Times. Universally, the Mitalipov study was recognized as a milestone, and so it appears to be – a milestone on our journey to…wherever it is we are headed.

What did they do, and why is it important? Mitalipov improved greatly on previous efforts at germline editing, targeting embryos created using donor eggs and sperm carrying a pathogenic variant in the MYBPC3 gene associated with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Modification was successful over 70% percentage of the time, no off-target effects were detected, and only one of the 58 embryos was found to be a mosaic of altered and unaltered cells. While significant safety and efficacy concerns remain to be addressed, this work goes a long way toward validating the idea that, sooner rather than later, clinical use of this technology will be a realistic possibility.

The experiment raised hopes, but also some questions. CRISPR is often described as a DNA version of a search-and-replace function in a word processing program, but CRISPR itself only does search-and-remove. The ‘replace’ part leverages the cell’s own machinery for fixing breaks in DNA, and its innate penchant for tidying up any loose ends. Quick to the breach, cells can often be coaxed into using a template for the repair if one is provided along with enzymatic scissors and a guide RNA, allowing us to insert a custom DNA sequence. This bespoke DNA can be anything, but in this case it was meant to be a benign version of the MYBPC3 gene. In a surprising development, the cells preferentially ignored the synthetic template and used the unaffected version on the sister chromosome as a guide instead.

This had the desired effect of introducing a functioning wildtype gene, but if it is not overcome as a technical issue, will limit the range of what can be achieved via gene editing. This model doesn’t work at all with recessive disease, where there are two copies of the pathogenic variant. Additionally, it would not allow for the introduction of DNA sequences other than what is carried by a parental allele – a capability which is, I would argue, the truly unique feature of gene editing.

Articles about CRISPR may (and usually do) talk about its potential to prevent Mendelian diseases like Huntington’s or sickle cell, but we are already capable of preventing transmission of these diseases using IVF with PGD to identify embryos that are unaffected. Yes, as has been pointed out, this is not foolproof. A round of IVF may produce no unaffected embryos. In rare circumstances, one parent may be homozygous for an autosomal dominant disease. These are non-trivial events when they occur but they are rare and limited circumstances. For the rest, replacing one expensive and complicated technology with another is incremental progress at best, and not the reason why this story was A-1 on the NY Times website. Media interest, let no one be confused, was about the potential of CRISPR to produce what they referred to (inevitably) as designer babies.

Can the technology produce designer babies? This would be an easier question toanswer if designer babies were actually a thing that you could define, but they’re not. Generally, what people mean by ‘designer baby’ is one created through any use of reproductive technology to ensure specific traits, as opposed to using identical technology to avoid diseases. The problem with this is that drawing the distinction is a bit of Impressionistic painting – clear from a distance, but blurring together when you get close. A number of articles this week suggested that designer babies can’t happen because traits are not something that can be manipulated by tweaking a gene or two (here and here). This is comforting but may not hold up. It’s fair to say that you can’t tweak general intelligence – but what about, for example, executive function? And while we’re on it, would that be increasing intelligence (bad) or avoiding ADHD and other mental health problems (good)?

But this is leading me into rabbit holes, where we debate what is or might be or could be possible, when just now I want only to say that the potential of gene editing to add an entirely new dimension to what we can currently offer is bound tightly to its ability to introduce DNA sequences that are different from what either parent can contribute. When we are able do that, we can expand the concept of what it means to ‘choose’ a child’s genotype. We can add rare variants that confer some protection or competitive edge. We can even contemplate adding synthetic variants designed in a lab and not borrowed from natural experiments. When move past embryo selection to embryo improvement, we will have our little Gucci baby whose possible existence causes so much consternation.

So does this week’s blockbuster paper put us closer to that day? Yes, because the technology has moved forward a giant step. Not that technology ever moves backwards, but the speed with which it has improved is staggering, and while momentum is not going to carry it over the remaining hurdles like a hot wheels car going loop the loop, it does make it easier to assume that all technological barriers will eventually fall. But at the same time, the template surprise reminds us that every step forward reveals another twist in the road.

Are we almost there? Who knows. If 2016 taught me anything, it was to stay out of the prediction game.

So what would a wise republic do? Coincidentally, a workgroup under the auspices of the American Society of Human Genetics published a paper yesterday in the AJHG laying out recommendations for public policy on human germline editing. The position statement was approved by ASHG, NSGC and 9 other organizations from six continents (full disclosure: I am one of the co-authors). The take home point is that modification of the human genome (egg, sperm or embryo) would be premature at this time but may be justified in the future, providing that there is a compelling medical rationale, an evidence base to support its use, ethical justification and a transparent public process to solicit and incorporate stakeholder input. In the interim, the organizations encourage governments to permit and to fund work like Mitalipov’s that investigates the potential of human germline engineering.

Having been a part of this group, I can attest that we thought long and hard about this aspect of the statement, and that we made it despite our concerns that this technology holds risks for both individuals and society, including the potential to increase existing inequities in health and quality of life. We may try and regulate use and norms such that we get the upside and not the downside, but we must acknowledge that to a large extent the two are inextricable.

Speaking only for myself, I can say that I see the allure of a form of intervention that might prevent rather than merely treat sickness and suffering, even as I sympathize with those who worry about the impact of the technology on future generations. If the choice were mine, it would be a difficult choice. But in the end, what I recognize is that we are not given a choice between going backwards and going forwards. The truth is that gene engineering is going to happen. No one government or individual is going to stop it — the world is too big and the stakes are too large. The questions that sit in front of us are not yes or no, but where, how and under what circumstances. I believe that a thoughtful society should engage with the technology, providing capital and oversight, resources and regulation. To turn our back is to sacrifice whatever leverage we could bring to bear as we establish norms for use, and to cede our leadership role in the scientific community at the dawn of an era, the start of a journey to…wherever.